How should the standardized and innovative development of cooperatives be guided?
The Ministry of Agriculture recently held a national symposium on the innovative development of farmers' cooperatives in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province. The meeting held that farmers' cooperatives, as important new types of agricultural operating entities, can only ensure that they play an important role in promoting agricultural transformation and upgrading, bringing farmers into the market, and promoting farmers' income growth and prosperity if they adhere to both standardization and innovation and focus on improving the quality of development.
The reporter learned at the symposium that since the implementation of the Law on Specialized Farmers' Cooperatives, the number of cooperatives has grown very rapidly. As of June this year, there were more than 1.4 million cooperatives nationwide, with more than 99 million member farmer households, but the problems of small scale, weak strength, and low operating quality were still fairly prominent. Encouragingly, many places have carried out various forms of innovation in making cooperatives bigger and stronger, achieving good results.
Innovation in organizational form. In recent years, on the basis of specialized cooperation, cooperatives have seen the emergence of land share cooperatives based on land contractual management rights contributed as shares and community share cooperatives based on the conversion of collective assets into quantified shares. Heilongjiang's cooperative development model of “taking land participation in cooperatives as the core, modern agricultural machinery as the carrier, and production cooperation as the bond”, as well as cooperatives established in various ways such as labor service cooperatives and property management cooperatives in Jiangsu, Sichuan, Zhejiang and other places, have all flourished.
⟦NL> Innovation in industrial formats. On the basis of producing and selling agricultural products, cooperatives carry out diversified operations, developing planting-breeding cycles, integration of production, processing and sales, handmade products, leisure sightseeing, and rural tourism. From simply growing grain, raising pigs, and selling products, they have expanded to selling services, experiences, and feelings, and from traditional planting and breeding industries to processing, services, finance and other fields, showing a trend of continuously deepening horizontal integration and vertical integration.
Innovation in operating mechanisms. Some cooperatives adopt methods such as share participation, leasing, and trusteeship to uniformly operate members' land; some hire professional managers or professional management teams to be responsible for daily operations; some use information-based means such as text messages, WeChat, and QQ groups for democratic decision-making; and still others rely on farmer households for production bases, enterprises for product sales, and experts for technical services, giving play to the functional advantages of family operation, cooperative operation, and enterprise operation. Cooperatives have become open carriers and composite organizations that combine new entities and traditional farmer households and integrate production and services, gradually forming an operating mechanism with diverse participants, varied benefit distribution, and flexible management decision-making.
Innovation in support methods. In some places, especially poor areas, fiscal funds, project funds, and poverty alleviation funds invested in rural areas are converted into quantified shares for individual farmers, invested in cooperatives in the form of shares, and assets formed by fiscal projects are transferred to cooperatives for holding and management and protection, transforming one-time state investment and one-time farmer benefit into long-term preservation of fiscal investment value and sustained benefit for the farmer masses. Some places include assistant directors of cooperatives in the programs for college student village officials and the "Three Supports and One Assistance" talent plan, guiding college students to work in cooperatives and improving cooperatives' business management capabilities. Some send cadres from the agricultural system to cooperatives to provide one-on-one targeted assistance and guidance, while other places focus on building provincial-level public brands to provide a platform for cooperatives to sell products.
The meeting emphasized that to improve the quality of cooperative development and unleash the vitality of cooperative development, it is necessary to adhere to both standardization and innovation and promote both. Standardization is the foundation of cooperative development; only by doing a good job in standardization can cooperatives reflect their own basic attributes and always adhere to the purpose of serving members. Innovation is the driving force of cooperative development; only by doing a good job in innovation can cooperatives continuously enhance their vitality and shoulder the historical mission entrusted by the times. On the basis of persistently doing a good job in the standardized development of cooperatives, actively explore cooperative innovation and make cooperatives bigger and stronger. As long as they comply with laws and regulations, adhere to cooperative principles, and are welcomed by the farmer masses, they should all be allowed and encouraged, and measures should be taken to guide them, so that cooperatives become an important platform for mass entrepreneurship and innovation in the agricultural field.
The meeting required that four areas of work be done well at present: First, earnestly summarize the fresh experience at the grassroots level, summarize and generalize the different development models of new types of agricultural operating entities, strengthen publicity and promotion, let the farmer masses choose independently according to their own needs, and turn “bonsai” into “scenery”. Second, solidly do a good job in pilot demonstrations, steadily carry out reform pilots such as cooperative credit cooperation, and continue to carry out demonstration cooperative creation actions. Third, make the training of cooperative leaders a long-term task and urgent work, adopt various forms, and train and reserve a large number of leaders with internet thinking, good at business management, and mastery of advanced technology. Fourth, actively create a good legal and policy environment, strengthen investigation and research, adhere to problem orientation and open-door law revision, extensively listen to the opinions of cooperatives and the farmer masses, further implement and improve existing policies, strengthen policy creation, fully demonstrate the value of policies, and let the broad farmer masses and cooperatives have a greater sense of gain.
Vice Minister of Agriculture Chen Xiaohua attended the meeting and delivered a speech. Relevant responsible persons from the agricultural departments of five provinces and municipalities including Heilongjiang and Jiangsu spoke, and more than a dozen grassroots representatives including the Renfa Modern Agricultural Machinery Cooperative in Keshan County, Heilongjiang Province, exchanged experience.